Project: New Syllabus

22 Dec

As I talked about recently I’ll be starting a new project next year to provide help to new designers and those designers struggling with making the transition to standards based design. I’ve outlined a syllabus on what I’d like to cover.

  1. Introduction
    1. To the Web as a Design Medium
    2. To Web Browsers
    3. To Users
    4. To Clients
  2. Things Designers Design
    1. Information
      1. Content
      2. Navigation
      3. Usability of Information
      4. Accessibility of Information
    2. Semantics
      1. Codeable Accessibility
      2. Web Standards
    3. Aesthetics
      1. Branding
      2. Culture
      3. Artwork
  3. Using Tools
  4. Bringing It All Together

I haven’t yet got a complete article list to match the Syllabus but I have made a start:

  1. Taking an Accurate Brief
  2. Identifying User and Business Goals
  3. Building Personas
  4. Sectioning Content and Building a Site Map
  5. Performing Usability Testing
  6. Wireframing the Content
  7. Deciding on Accessibility Strategies
  8. Contingency Design
  9. Building Unstyled Markup Templates
  10. Building a Concordance of Existing Client Styles
  11. Using Colour and Type Effectively
  12. Sourcing Imagery
  13. Using Web Validators to Test Reliability
  14. Using Firefox as a Designers Tool
  15. Invaluable Software
  16. Online and Ofline Recommended Reading
  17. Building a Design Concept
  18. Using your Wireframe, Design Concept and Markup Templates to Iterate Through Prototypes
  19. Efficient Communication with your Client
  20. Getting Good Feedback After Deployment

This is quite rough but it covers all the major areas. I’d be very interested in hearing some feedback and suggestions on the Syllabus and article list. I’ll also be very open to contributions along these themes from others. All that I ask is that they are written for an audience of those totally unfamiliar with the concpets under discussion.

8 Responses to “Project: New Syllabus”

  1. John Oxton December 22, 2004 at 12:13 #

    This migh tie in nicely with a little something I have planned… maybe we should talk!

  2. Kev December 22, 2004 at 12:23 #

    By all means John :o)

    You can get me on kleitch[AT]kevinleitch[DOT]co[DOT]uk

    I’ll look forward to hearing from you.

  3. John Oxton December 22, 2004 at 16:02 #

    Will do, probably Jan 2005 🙂

  4. Derek Featherstone December 31, 2004 at 04:59 #

    You’ve got quite a great start on a list there, Kevin. Rather than comment directly on your syllabus and draft list of articles, I think I’ll draft my own as a starting point. After that, I’d be likely to have much better feedback than just from looking at yours…

    If you and Oxton cook something up, I’d be game for contributing in some way as well (that is, if you’ll take people from this side of the Atlantic!!) 😉

  5. Kev December 31, 2004 at 05:44 #

    “that is, if you’ll take people from this side of the Atlantic!!”

    Of course 😉 the more contributions the better, especially from such esteemed contributors!

  6. Phil Baines January 11, 2005 at 13:28 #

    I like this idea. Will you be making these materials available on Left Brain/Right Brain? or have you thought about using a seperate domain just for this material. I might have one going spare that is doing nothing. (www.gnasp.com) Not that it has any meaning to this project.

    Anyway, if you do decide to go for a new site, we (Netring) might be able to help with some hosting.

  7. Kev January 11, 2005 at 14:44 #

    Thats very generous Phil 🙂

    My initial plan is to host it all here. I’m not sure how popular it will or won’t be so hosting may not be an issue in terms of cost. My current hosts have supplied me with one free hosting account already (an autism campaign site) so I think supplying another one is a liberty even I’m not cheeky enough to ask for 😉

    If its OK with you I’ll stick to it all being here for now and if it does take off and start exceeding my bandwidth then we could talk again?

  8. Phil Baines January 11, 2005 at 14:57 #

    “If it’s OK with you” – It’s your project Kev, so no complaints from me.

    I like the Syllabus so far, and I am pretty sure I know some people that would be interested in using material like this to train small or out of date design companies on how they should be doing things.

    How will you be releasing the materials? May I recommend creative commons as a good licence for this if you are going to be releasing it to the public? Then you might be able to make sure that no body uses it as training material without giving the creators of the materials credit.

    I would also be interested in helping with the creation of the materials if you need it. Email phil[dot]baines[at]netring[dot]co[dot]uk.

    Hopefully you won’t hold the Netring site against me; I am ashamed of it myself. But a new one is on the way.

    Tala for now!

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